Woke up this morning to three missed calls: Dad, Mom, Taylor and two voicemails.

I hit play on the first listed.

“Sophi. It’s your dad.” Pre-caller-ID habits die hard.
“Call me.”

I could hear enough gravity in his voice to intuit real urgency in the request . . . even if urgent calls have become routine in recent weeks; my dad’s anxiety palatable across the line, on our now, daily calls.

On these calls, we talk about all sorts of things — my jobs, weather here, weather there, my sisters, politics . . . anything but what is on his mind, on my mind.

This divorce has put him in a state of disbelief. I feel for him, I do, and I want to make it better, but, also, I want to scream.
Was I the only one paying attention these last two decades?

The best I’ve managed to do is answer his calls and breathe on the other end.

After one ring, he picked up.

“John is dead.” He uttered before even saying hello.

As I type those words, I am again under the crashing wave of shock that came over me in that instant.

John is one of my mom’s five brothers, just nine months older than her — “Irish Twins”. John has the natural good looks and charm of a rugged movie star — think Brad Pitt circa A River Runs Through It. To boot, he loves the outdoors and will take every opportunity to be one with them. It wasn’t uncommon for him to ride his horse alone up the trails to the high wilderness behind my grandma’s house, equipped with little more than a hunting rifle, a pup tent, and some beef jerky; not to return for several days.

So, fifteen years ago, when he and my aunt Gigi packed up their life and three young sons to move to her hometown of Vancouver, Canada, it seemed like an ideal fit. With a place so blessed by Mother Earth, the opportunities to experience the great outdoors were plentiful and so were the job prospects. An additional and perhaps more dire motive was that Vancouver was far away from a poison that lurked in that Utah valley country, one that had cast a spell on my uncle.

Once settled in Vancouver, John found a bountiful land, flourishing in shades of green and flowing with abundant rivers: salmon, steelhead, cutthroat trout. He didn’t hesitate to take up fly fishing, and in a short time he became very skilled at casting his line and colorful fly in the sport’s ritualistic dance of seduction; tempting the hungry mouths below the skin of the river, to emerge above the ceiling of their wet womb. Which, thanks to John’s willingness to take risk and wade deep into the swifter and more populated currents, they often did.

All the family back home have become the lucky beneficiaries of this newfound passion. Each summer, John, my aunt, and my cousins would drive the three days down from Vancouver in their truck and trailer with a big Coleman cooler full of the season’s catch. We’d gather at my grandma’s house, a small rock home nestled in a pocket at the foot of the Uintas, to feast on the booty. Everyone was so glad to see them, couldn’t wait to hear John’s fishing tales, to taste wild salmon grilled on an open flame, in a way only he could, and to all shriek with disgust and giddy when he ate the eyeballs.

A carpenter by trade, he took a job building movie sets, another natural habitat for him. His likeability translated well amongst the production crew, and he quickly found his circle. This made the inevitable late nights less dark, but it also made it easier for the snakes to locate him. They hunted at night, slowly slithering up his limbs, staking their claim on his veins.

Addiction is a family trait that has manifested in a multitude of ways amongst my mother’s siblings. She, somehow, managed to wriggle her way out of its clutches before it could claim her. I often recall a story of her at 15 years old — she’d been fighting with my grandpa and temporarily went to live with her older half-sister, Paula and Paula’s boyfriend. Paula had given my mom some speed tablets. An apparent gesture to help my mom combat the fatigue she battled while attending high school and working a part-time job at an ice cream counter at the local supermarket. She described to me how, as soon as Paula left the house, she tossed the little pills in the toilet and flushed.
The story felt, less of a parental parable around saying no to drugs, but more as an offering on how she had side-stepped a destiny that dogged her.

John had been sliding deeper recently; his vitality flailing. Over the course of the past few years, he’d lost his job, suffered a brain aneurysm and eventually and most significant of all, he’d lost his major pillar, his wife, my aunt, Gigi. A grounded and caring woman who has tried, for years, to keep him away from the free shoot-up centers across Vancouver. But, the poison was too enchanting, too twisted around his soul.

My cousins keep coming to my mind. All kind and capable, almost men. One with a daughter on the way.

It’s all too strange. I desperately want to be closer, to feel the humanity of my family, to share in their terrible pain.

But, I am down to 150 in my bank account.